4 Responses

[…] Still, it’s not like the online world is completely separate from the world of face-to-face communication, and the blogosphere can draw from communication skills already well-developed and understood in “meat-space” contexts. I’ve done a series of posts, for example, on how debate can work online (here and here). […]

A colleague just pointed out this analysis of the exchange between Maslin vs Morano – what I am surprised about is this analysis seems to have been done in a vacuum without asking the participants about the event.
What the tape does not say was that Sky News gave me Prof. Maslin 5 minutes notice that I was being interviewed with a professional climate skeptic. It was Saturday morning and the weekend team had no idea what they were doing and had not briefed the interviewer at all. For seven years I have not given another interview at Sky News. What the tape also does not shows is the hate mail I got after that interview and the threats against my family. Which is something very few communication experts take into account when analyzing scientists engagement with the media.

Thanks for your perspective, Mark! It was apparent in the tape that the interview was unfair because it wasn’t on “level ground”–Morano was basically a professional debater who spent his working days preparing for such debates, and now we see you were given <5 minutes. This is one of the reasons that the National Center for Science Education (for example) has long given for avoiding debates with creationists (see https://ncse.com/cej/3/2/creation-evolution-debates-whos-winning-them-now). It was courageous of you to go ahead anyhow, and the tape gives us the opportunity to slow down and analyze the techniques communicators like Morano are using.

What I’m about here.

I'll be using this space to consider what happens when scientists enter what Kenneth Burke called the "barnyard" of our civic controversies. What communication techniques will help scientists maneuver among the piles of, um, fertilizer citizens are throwing at each other? How can they best make arguments, and position themselves in debates? Of course, epic fails are just as interesting.--Jean Goodwin